Jillian is almost walking. She can take a few steps here and there, but she’s not walking as her primary mode of transportation just yet.

And as if we needed even further proof that she is my child, she has discovered speed before skill. That was a hallmark of my childhood – from walking to roller skating to riding a bike. I have the scars to prove it.

Jillian holds on to one of the footstools and launches herself at the sofa. I’m thankful that the sofa is soft and fluffy, or she’d look like she’d been in Fight Club. It’s when she turns around and goes the other way that I start to have the mini-strokes. The footstools have pointy edges that are ineffectually covered by canvas.

Jillian lets go of the sofa and takes two or three drunken steps toward the footstool. About halfway there, her top half gets ahead of her bottom half and she usually lands on her target face-first. This might be God’s way of keeping her from being too beautiful (I believe this is the reason why I am 32 years old and I still get zits), but I’m going to frustrate His will on this if I have to duct-tape her to the floor.

Okay, I just checked and we don’t have any duct tape.

For as verbal as she is, she doesn’t really say any actual words yet. She does say “Uh oh,” both before and after she throws things, and she’ll say “Dada” to Freddie, but I? I am “Elmo.” She can also say “Nana,” but I’m not 100% sure if she says it because it sounds cool or if she really knows who Nana is.

We’ll find out next week when Nana comes to visit! YAAAY!

We’re making progress in other realms, too. Her eating habits are improving, even if she’s still the Gagging Drama Queen when it comes to actual pieces of food. She is a pro at feeding herself with a spoon, which is an okay trade-off in my book. In fact, she gets extremely pissed off if I take the spoon away from her. Finger foods are still slow going, though. She’ll eat Cheerios, string cheese, graham crackers, and tiny, tiny peanut-butter sandwiches. She hates jelly, which is WRONG and if she didn’t look exactly like me I might request a DNA test. Jillian is drinking roughly three cows’ worth of milk, which has caused some interesting situations to develop.

For the last week or so, I would go get Jillian out of her crib and she would be very smelly. Not poop-smelly, but a sickly-sweet smelly. I couldn’t figure out what it was and it was really only her head that smelled.

Then, I went in to get her up from a nap and figured it out. She sleeps on her stomach, arms and legs splayed out in all directions, and like her Daddy, she drools something fierce. At first, I thought it was a diaper leak, but those Target diapers are totally amazing and anyone who buys Pampers is wasting their money, for sure. Besides, the big puddle was in the corner, and she’d have to do some crazy gymnastics to get her butt over there. So it’s a drool puddle.

Milky drool. Which makes her smell like a homeless geriatric. It was really gross. I tried changing her sheet, but that didn’t fix it, so I had to pull the sheet, mattress pad, and crib bumper off and wash them all.

[Side note – Elmo is on TV right now singing the ABC song and Jillian is clapping her hands like she’s in church. What is it about this fluorescent red rodent that kids love?]

So things are going quite well with this kid. Sometimes I worry, because – DUH. That’s what I do. But it appears as if I am growing a happy, healthy kid! She’s just a little bit nuts.